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College
College Students Do Not Lack Concentration
November 24, 2009 12:00 PM
She must
go from being taught to learning and thinking on her
own.Read
more...
Older Student Finds College A Challenge
September 29, 2009 12:00 PM
Adapting
is essential in keeping your
jobRead
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Choosing her battles
February 03, 2009 12:00 PM
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Dear Dr. Fournier: Our college freshman daughter came home for the holidays and while she attends where she’s always wanted to go to, where her father and I attended, she is miserable. Before she returned for this semester, she said to us, “Don’t worry. I’ll stick it out.” She convinced her best friend to go there, too. We are not wealthy people, even though we have a college fund for her education. Even worse, greedy leaders of corporations and Wall Street have depleted part of our personal savings that contribute to her allowance at college. To make matters worse, she doesn’t even know what she wants to major in. She’s 20 years old and believes these should be her decisions. Does it make sense for her to stick it out? |
The Assessment: We live in a country that has thrived on past greatness for several decades and has even passed this now extinguished torch on to your daughter’s generation. This country’s early-end Baby Boomer leadership has foolishly thought and taught that hard work is all that is needed.
Sadly, the Baby Boom latter-end leaders have developed and passed on the mantra to our children that more is better, and they have attached the horrific idea that it’s okay for our children to get more by any means necessary. This is evident from the current economic crisis.
My son said to me in a recent conversation that he thought historians would one day write that the Baby Boomers were the worst generation of this country because of the avarice and greed the generation has espoused, regardless of the collateral damage it has caused to so many people.
Simply put, the values system in this country stinks. Just as rotten is the idea in your daughter’s generation that they are, at 20 or even 21, old enough to know what is best and to make decisions with other people’s money.
I can tell you, they are not.
What To Do: This is not the time for your child to be toughing it out at a college she doesn’t like because of some notion of obligation to a friend, and more important, with no vision of the future to guide her in her studies and playing Russian Roulette with your money.
When I counsel students for career pathing, they must start by learning about demographic visioning which reveals how the world is changing and what it will look like in the year 2020, 2030, and beyond. I make sure they see how new technologies have already eradicated even high paying careers. For example, a technology company recently terminated hundreds of people whose job it was to search the Internet for news content. A software program replaced them.
It is always frustrating to me that most of the children that come to me for career pathing have set their sights on jobs that won’t even be around by the time they graduate. Just last week, a student came to me excited and determined to be in a certain profession. When we looked up the average salary (something that never occurred to him), he found out it no longer pays six figures. The average today is around $42,000 a year, which, when taxes and other deductions are taken out, will be far less a year than what his parents recently spent on his extra-curricular activities for fall semester and a holiday ski vacation.
Until a child wakes up to career pathing with demographic visioning, going to college is useless act.
If she continues down this road, you might as well call her college fund her psychiatric fund, which she will need when she graduates with a useless degree and no one to hire her.
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Reassessing College Admissions
January 27, 2009 12:00 PM
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I just read where Oxford and Cambridge, perhaps two of the most prestigious universities in the world, have succumbed to asking admissions questions of prospective students that are quite frankly, stupid. As an educator, I’m sure you will agree that we are seeing a decline in the intelligence levels in leadership, even at the world’s greatest universities. Are there no smart people left in the world? |
The Assessment: Recently, it was reported in a CNN news segment that Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the United Kingdom have begun asking prospective students some rather unusual questions during the interview process, including, “Would you rather be a novel or a poem?” and, “What would you do if you were a magpie?”
Because of the prestige of these universities, many expect them to ask questions like, “Explain Keynesian economics,” or “Compare and contrast poets Byron, Shelley and Keats.”
Supposedly, interview questions are used to ascertain the knowledge level of a prospective candidate. Answers are thought to indicate a prospect’s ability to achieve and be a successful student at the respective college or university he or she wishes to attend.
Unfortunately, spitting out information on such questions as “What is the theory of relativity?” or “Name two ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem,” is useless in most cases because the answers have been memorized, or worse, the prospective student is simply reciting a teacher’s opinion, position or preference or truth. This reveals absolutely nothing about the student’s most important knowledge capacity – to think of the unthinkable to create new knowledge, let go of the obsolete and be fearless and relentless attacking new territory with originality and uniqueness of each person’s one and only perspective. Equally important is the ability to think on your feet without the being judgmental of a neophyte at facing the unexpected.
Yes, I know thinking on one’s own is a dying art. This is evidenced in the cattle-like or herd mentality of most students coming out of our high school and colleges.
This country, and much of the so-called first world countries, including the United Kingdom, seems to be determined to continue educating children as it has for the last four decades – based on an outdated education paradigm.
What To Do: Reassess your criticism that Oxford’s and Cambridge’s leadership is declining in intellect because they are now asking questions of this nature. These are questions that will demonstrate to them whether or not a student has really learned and can apply past instruction to create new knowledge and/or handle even the most out-of-the-box question that intuitively may lead to discoveries, such as leaders did when they challenged scientists to put a man on the moon or the Human Genome Project.
It is time our leaders pull their intellectual heads out of the sand and realize that teaching to tests and accepting the most narrow of answers is producing what amounts to a lobotomized individual. This is a student who cannot apply what he or she has learned and cannot do a thing without being specifically instructed on what is expected. While teaching to the tests may put out a straight A student, what good is this if he or she cannot think on their own, be responsible, continually learn on the job, and be so innovative as to make oneself virtually indispensable?
While I agree we are seeing a decline in the level of ability (not intelligence) of our best and brightest children, I do not agree with your assessment that there are no smart people in the world … only those that are the product of an old, outdated teaching model forced into the box by the “power of the doorknob” where teachers grade our children based on the answer they want to see or the one the book says is right.
I applaud Oxford and Cambridge for asking questions that demonstrate how well prospective students can think that all is possible, not just how much they have memorized from teachers. This shows brilliant leadership at these universities.
Maybe this will shake up a few of the so-called education leaders in this country holding on to the old paradigm. The new Education Secretary, Arne Duncan would do well to take note of this, make a bold move, and call for a new education model. He would do well to dump No Child Left Behind, which only produces a lobotomized individual who cannot see the forest for the trees but sure can find the right bubble to fill in on worthless tests.
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Pink-Slip doesn't void education
January 20, 2009 12:00 PM
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I just was “pink-slipped.” I have a college degree and two masters degrees. I have worked for the same company for 16 years with excellent performance reviews, having done everything the world said would give me job security. I have taught these values to my children since they were able to listen and talk. Now I have to tell my children that everything I said to them about getting a good education is as worthless as the garbage I have been treated like. Where did I go wrong and what do I do now? |
The Assessment: The news is bleak at best and the reports are for more companies and corporations to lay off more people.
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, first used a pink slip. At the end of the workweek, assembly-line employees received a white slip indicating a satisfactory job or a pink slip for unsatisfactory work and “the boot”.
Now, Ford and the other American Vehicle Manufacturers have not done their jobs well enough to be competitive and with foresight to “plan for a rainy day.” They should be getting “pink-slipped.” Instead, they are groveling for bailouts from the American Taxpayer, along with company leaders in the housing and finance industry and what for? So they can continue flying around in million-dollar corporate jets and partying like rock starts leading bling-bling lifestyles that leave God, ethics and obligations to employees, vendors and the American public out of the equation all together.
It appears to many that having the proper education, being good at your job, and teaching your children ethics is useless because this country’s leadership in business and government has a “I personally deserve a bling-bling life” mentality with no regard to others.
The desire for bling (flashy or elaborate jewelry, ornamented cell phones, plasma TVs, vacations at clubs in exotic locations, expensive import cars, excessively large houses, and mistresses) is to have more of it than your neighbor or co-worker so you cannot only “appear” but also feel more powerful and successful as if you have earned the right to break the laws when in reality, they have morphed into idol worshippers of avarice and greed.
We are so close to a Godless society, it is scary.
What To Do: First, do not abandon teaching your children that education is important. They must learn now to plan and organize and become responsible for their own outcomes. Explain to them that school is their first job. They may not be paid in money yet they will be paid in the dividend of learning and how to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. Explain that if they learn how to do this, they will fare much better as adults when they have to face adversities such as the one you are facing. They will be the ones that will be able to reinvent themselves and save the country from lechers. I believe that you are in for a life change from employee to leader and possibly entrepreneur.
Also take this opportunity to explain to your children what greed does to a person and to society and instruct them that as adults they are to care for friends, family and strangers in a way that will not bring pain and suffering as your former employer has done.
Regardless of this, explain to your children that while there will always be bad people they must make the most of their education now, which will help them prepare and change what is patently unfair in the world. Remind them that birth did not come with the guarantee that we’ll never have problems, suffer hardships or be free from all strife.
As for you, if you received the proper education, you learned how to plan, organize, and develop strategies that will help you in just such a time as this. You must now build a new you by not taking time out to wallow in pity for “poor me.” While my heart goes out to you, my head says, get with it and get or create for yourself another job and demonstrate resilience to your children. If you are as good as you say you were at this old job, you’ll find someone that will appreciate your talent, even in a difficult economy and you will bring a loving God back into your children’s lives.
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